Kristin Hersh / Fred Abong (live at The Redgrave Theatre)

Bristol
17 June 2018

Former Throwing Muses and Belly bass guitarist Fred Abong was first up, and apparently the airport had lost his guitar so Kristin had kindly lent him hers for the night. Not heard any of his solo work, so I was at a disadvantage, but I liked that Pavement-like glimmer he was plying with a dusty delivery with tightly wound chords full of weird little divinations and bright lyrical pools.

After a short interval, Kristin Hersh graced the stage, and wasting no time she carved straight into a track from Wyatt At The Coyote Palace, a stormy roar that filled up the space. She hit into her guitar with such force it literally buzzed between songs, the volatility of her voice was phenomenal — not only did it reach to the shadowy back of the theatre, its scary mood switched, smash and grabbed your psyche, giving Kristin’s words a startled shimmer. If you weren’t familiar with her wares (I think most here were converts) you couldn’t fail to be impressed.

Some of these songs are more than twenty years old, but she sang them as if they were penned yesterday. No best-of slack or water-treading here; you get a real sense that she lives in them, spatters their bones with a raw intensity. One minute giddy with melodic sway, the next vocally tearing it away, those husky, gravelled tones matched by a burning dexterity.

A lot of Throwing Muses tracks slipped into the set list. “Freesia” was incredible, full of barbed celebration and angled after-images. Another voodoo dolls in harmonic hat pins, a lovely contraction of wordage and hatcheting hooks. “City of the Dead”‘s glittered sheen and spiralling concentrics gave me a taste for a live rendition of “Fish”, which of course sadly never materialised.

She complained about the bitchiness of her new strings, but you’d never have known as she sparked into the clipped candour of “Gazebo Tree”. Her head swerved snakelike as the tune’s bucolic brightness had her eyes skipping into a trance-like distance. Fan favourite “Your Ghost” is always a pleasure to re-hear, her words cinematically painting loss, the space between verse and chorus echoed with a séance-like tap of the guitar’s body. “Your Dirty Answer” from Sunny Border Blue swept a rat-tail raucousness… at one point she seemed to be arguing with herself as the line “My fantasies are unlived histories” teetered my tinderbox.

She yelled, screamed, her lyrics twisted, illuminated that sparse stage. “Mississippi Kite” and “Flooding” from her Crooked album unfolding in accented curls, a short rendition of “Cuckoo”; she even delved into a murderous lullaby which was sung to her as a child (where the victim dies twice). Some tracks I didn’t recognise, but for the most part this lilted the cherry of loved classics. A turbulent set that lead to riotous applause, even a bit of floor stamping that promoted a speedy return and two more tasty encore treats.

“I’ve saved all my happy songs for now”, joked Kristin, adding “aren’t you lucky”, with a cheeky snigger, before launching into the half-light poetics of “Sno Cat” — still one of her absolute zeniths, all finishing on a heated “Fat Skier” that put the sparkle back into that wet Sunday evening. A show that matched, if not bettered, The Lantern outing of a couple of years ago.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-